Hell City, Chapter 12: “The Hike and the Hitch”

Hell City

Chapter 12: “The Hike and the Hitch”

Hell City is our weekly comic book type superhero detective noir thing by our good friend in LA, Tim!

I had been walking for what felt like fifty hours. I looked down at my watch and realized it had only been four minutes. Man I’m out of shape. I really need to get back to the gym. My trainer, Hildago, would say that I’ve just came down with a case of the “lazies.” But after the rough week I’ve been having, the lazies sound about as good as sipping a frappacini on top of a Vampirella look-alike in Maui.

My hitchhiking thumb had started to grow the most tenuous of blisters after being exposed to the harsh northern Ohio wind (Hell City is in Ohio). I was beginning to think that no one would ever stop. I took out my one last suicide pill thinking this might be the end. I raised it up to my quivering lip. I hope one is enough. Maybe I shouldn’t have traded the rest to those college kids for magic beans back in Cleveland. I’m not an idiot, I know there’s no such thing as magic beans. I was just hungry and figured they were regular beans. Just as I was about to shuffle off this mortal coil a beat-up Toyota limo pulled over to the side of the road. I spit my suicide pill out and it landed inside the mouth of an armadillo who quickly died.

A head popped out of the driver’s side window of the stretchosity that is the limo.

A long blonde haired douche cocked his mouth towards me and spewed forth words to my ears. “Hey mate! I was driving Herman Mooty to an award show for not-real actors but he died. Plenty of room in the back if you don’t mind riding next to a corpse.”

I’ve done weirder stuff next to expired people before. I said sure and hopped on in.

“So where you going?”

“Hell City. Bastard district.”

“Oh right on. My ex-wife lives there and I’m trying to win her back. I’ll drop you right off.”

The limo driver was the chattiest of Kathy’s. He told me his whole life story. How when he was born he had an extra set of ears that let him hear people’s thoughts. In middle school his High School gym teacher coach ripped them off in a fit of rage because he couldn’t complete the Presidential 2 minute mile fun run. He met the love of his life at a Green Day concert. She was a beautiful woman who got turned into a drum set by an ancient witch and could only be cured by him accidentally humping her after an encore of ‘American Idiot.’

He lost that same love of his life after he decided to quit being the vice president of Australia to instead pursue his lifelong dream of being an ice cream truck driver.

He eventually lost his license after accidentally selling some kid three pounds of uncut heroine instead of a dooter-pop. So he was forced to then drive limos… for money.

I nodded in and out of his story. To be honest I couldn’t stop thinking about all of the shows I Tivoed and would know have to catch up on. If I hear one spoiler from Vampire Diaries I will legitimately lose it. Sometimes I wonder if I ever had it to begin with. We finally made it to Hell City. The Bastard District. The only place I’ve ever call home.